Short Stories by Chekhov
my early childhood I have had a dread of gendarmes, police, legal
officials, and I was tormented with anxiety as though I had really
committed a crime and I could not sleep. Nurse and Prokofyi were also
upset and could not sleep. And, to make things worse, nurse had an
earache, and moaned and more than once screamed out. Hearing that I
could not sleep Prokofyi came quietly into my room with a little lamp
and sat by the table.
"You should have a drop of pepper-brandy...." he said after some
thought. "In this vale of tears things go on all right when you take a
drop. And if mother had some pepper-brandy poured into her ear she would
be much better."
About three he got ready to go to the slaughter-house to fetch some
meat. I knew I should not sleep until morning, and to use up the time
until nine, I went with him. We walked with a lantern, and his boy,
Nicolka, who was about thirteen, and had blue spots on his face and an
expression like a murderer's, drove behind us in a sledge, urging the
horse on with hoarse cries.
"You will probably be punished at the governor's," said Prokofyi as we
walked. "There is a governor's rank, and an archimandrite's rank, and an
officer's rank, and a doctor's rank, and every profession has its own
rank. You don't keep to yours and they won't allow it."
The slaughter-house stood behind the cemetery, and till then I had only
seen it at a distance. It consisted of three dark sheds surrounded by a
grey fence, from which, when the wind was in that direction in summer,
there came an overpowering stench. Now, as I entered the yard, I could
not see the sheds in the darkness; I groped through horses and sledges,
both empty and laden with meat; and there were men walking about with
lanterns and swearing disgustingly. Prokofyi and Nicolka swore as
filthily and there was a continuous hum from the swearing and coughing
and the neighing of the horses.
The place smelled of corpses and offal, the snow was thawing and already
mixed with mud, and in the darkness it seemed to me that I was walking
through a pool of blood.
When we had filled the sledge with meat, we went to the butcher's shop
in the market-place. Day was beginning to dawn. One after another the
cooks came with baskets and old women in mantles. With an axe in his
hand, wearing a white, blood-stained apron, Prokofyi swore terrifically
and crossed himself, turning toward the church, and shouted so loud that
he could be heard all over the market, avowing that he sold his meat at
cost price and even at a loss. He cheated in weighing and reckoning, the
cooks saw it, but, dazed by his shouting, they did not protest, but only
called him a gallows-bird.
Raising and dropping his formidable axe, he assumed picturesque
attitudes and constantly uttered the sound "Hak!" with a furious
expression, and I was really afraid of his cutting off some one's head
or hand.
I stayed in the butcher's shop the whole morning, and when at last I
went to the governor's my fur coat smelled of meat and blood. My state
of mind would have been appropriate for an encounter with a bear armed
with no more than a staff. I remember a long staircase with a striped
carpet, and a young official in a frock coat with shining buttons, who
silently indicated the door with both hands and went in to announce me.
I entered the hall, where the furniture was most luxurious, but cold and
tasteless, forming a most unpleasant impression--the tall, narrow pier-
glasses, and the bright, yellow hangings over the windows; one could see
that, though governors changed, the furniture remained the same. The
young official again pointed with both hands to the door and went toward
a large, green table, by which stood a general with the Order of
Vladimir at his neck.
"Mr. Pologniev," he began, holding a letter in his hand and opening his
mouth wide so that it made a round O. "I asked you to come to say this
to you: 'Your esteemed father has applied verbally and in writing to the
provincial marshal of nobility, to have you summoned and made to see the
incongruity of your conduct with the title of nobleman which you have
the honour to bear. His Excellency Alexander Pavlovich, justly thinking
that your conduct may be subversive, and finding that persuasion may not
be sufficient, without serious intervention on the part of the
authorities, has given me his decision as to your case, and I agree with
him.'"
He said this quietly, respectfully, standing erect as if I was his
superior, and his expression was not at all severe. He had a flabby,
tired face, covered with wrinkles, with pouches under his eyes; his hair
was dyed, and it was hard to guess his age from his appearance--fifty or
sixty.
"I hope," he went on, "that you will appreciate Alexander Pavlovich's
delicacy in applying to me, not officially, but privately. I have
invited you unofficially not as a governor, but as a sincere admirer of
your father's. And I ask you to change your conduct and to return to the
duties proper to your rank, or, to avoid the evil effects of your
example, to go to some other place where you are not known and where you
may do what you like. Otherwise I shall have to resort to extreme
measures."
For half a minute he stood in silence staring at me open-mouthed.
"Are you a vegetarian?" he asked.
"No, your Excellency, I eat meat."
He sat down and took up a document, and I bowed and left.
It was not worth while going to work before dinner. I went home and
tried to sleep, but could not because of the unpleasant, sickly feeling
from the slaughter-house and my conversation with the governor. And so I
dragged through till the evening and then, feeling gloomy and out of
sorts, I went to see Maria Victorovna. I told her about my visit to the
governor and she looked at me in bewilderment, as if she did not believe
me, and suddenly she began to laugh merrily, heartily, stridently, as
only good-natured, light-hearted people can.
"If I were to tell this in Petersburg!" she cried, nearly dropping with
laughter, bending over the table. "If I could tell them in Petersburg!"
IX
Now we saw each other often, sometimes twice a day. Almost every day,
after dinner, she drove up to the cemetery and, as she waited for me,
read the inscriptions on the crosses and monuments. Sometimes she came
into the church and stood by my side and watched me working. The
silence, the simple industry of the painters and gilders, Radish's good
sense, and the fact that outwardly I was no different from the other
artisans and worked as they did, in a waistcoat and old shoes, and that
they addressed me familiarly--were new to her, and she was moved by it
all. Once in her presence a painter who was working, at a door on the
roof, called down to me:
"Misail, fetch me the white lead."
I fetched him the white lead and as I came down the scaffolding she was
moved to tears and looked at me and smiled:
"What a dear you are!" she said.
I have always remembered how when I was a child a green parrot got out
of its cage in one of the rich people's houses and wandered about the
town for a whole month, flying from one garden to another, homeless and
lonely. And Maria Victorovna reminded me of the bird.
"Except to the cemetery," she said with a laugh, "I have absolutely
nowhere to go. The town bores me to tears. People read, sing, and
twitter at the Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your sister is
shy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me. I don't like the theatre.
What can I do with myself?"
When I was at her house I smelled of paint and turpentine, and my hands
were stained. She liked that. She wanted me to come to her in my
ordinary working-clothes; but I felt awkward in them in her drawing-
room, and as if I were in uniform, and so I always wore my new serge
suit. She did not like that.
"You must confess," she said once, "that you have not got used to your
new r?e. A working-man's suit makes you feel awkward and embarrassed.
Tell me, isn't it because you are not sure of yourself and are
unsatisfied? Does this work you have chosen, this painting of yours,
really satisfy you?" she asked merrily. "I know paint makes things look
nicer and wear better, but the things themselves belong to the rich and
after all they are a luxury. Besides you have said more than once that
everybody should earn his living with his own hands and you earn money,
not bread. Why don't you keep to the exact meaning of what you say? You
must earn bread, real bread, you must plough, sow, reap, thrash, or do
something which has to do directly with agriculture, such as keeping
cows, digging, or building houses...."
She opened a handsome bookcase which stood by the writing-table and
said:
"I'm telling you all this because I'm going to let you into my secret.
Voil?. This is my agricultural library. Here are books on arable land,
vegetable-gardens, orchard-keeping, cattle-keeping, bee-keeping: I read
them eagerly and have studied the theory of everything thoroughly. It is
my dream to go to Dubechnia as soon as March begins. It is wonderful
there, amazing; isn't it? The first year I shall only be learning the
work and getting used to it, and in the second year I shall begin to
work thoroughly, without sparing myself. My father promised to give me
Dubechnia as a present, and I am to do anything I like with it."
She blushed and with mingled laughter and tears she dreamed aloud of her
life at Dubechnia and how absorbing it would be. And I envied her. March
would soon be here. The days were drawing out, and in the bright sunny
afternoons the snow dripped from the roofs, and the smell of spring was
in the air. I too longed for the country.
And when she said she was going to live at Dubechnia, I saw at once that
I should be left alone in the town, and I felt jealous of the bookcase
with her books about farming. I knew and cared nothing about farming and
I was on the point of telling her that agriculture was work for slaves,
but I recollected that my father had once said something of the sort and
I held my peace.
Lent began. The engineer, Victor Ivanich, came home from Petersburg. I
had begun to forget his existence. He came unexpectedly, not even
sending a telegram. When I went there as usual in the evening, he was
walking up and down the drawing-room, after a bath, with his hair cut,
looking ten years younger, and talking. His daughter was kneeling by his
trunks and taking out boxes, bottles, books, and handing them to Pavel
the footman. When I saw the engineer, I involuntarily stepped back and
he held out both his hands and smiled and showed his strong, white, cab-
driver's teeth.
"Here he is! Here he is! I'm very pleased to see you, Mr. House-painter!
Maria told me all about you and sang your praises. I quite understand
you and heartily approve." He took me by the arm and went on: "It is
much cleverer and more honest to be a decent workman than to spoil State
paper and to wear a cockade. I myself worked with my hands in Belgium. I
was an engine-driver for five years...."
He was wearing a short jacket and comfortable slippers, and he shuffled
along like a gouty man waving and rubbing his hands; humming and buzzing
and shrugging with pleasure at being at home again with his favourite
shower-bath.
"There's no denying," he said at supper, "there's no denying that you
are kind, sympathetic people, but somehow as soon as you gentlefolk take
on manual labour or try to spare the peasants, you reduce it all to
sectarianism. You are a sectarian. You don't drink vodka. What is that
but sectarianism?"
To please him I drank vodka. I drank wine, too. We ate cheese, sausages,
pastries, pickles, and all kinds of dainties that the engineer had
brought with him, and we sampled wines sent from abroad during his